Dissatisfied N.C. teachers leave for other states, other jobs

It's been the cautionary tale of the summer: If the N.C. General Assembly continues to skimp on education spending, teachers will leave.

By Pressley BairdPressley.Baird@StarNewsOnline.com

It's been the cautionary tale of the summer: If the N.C. General Assembly continues to skimp on education spending, teachers will leave. Little money for education is nothing new. School funding has been strained since the economy bottomed out in 2008. Teacher salaries were frozen that year, and school districts across the state tightened their budgets.Five years later, the story is much the same. Apart from a 1.2 percent pay raise last year, which all state employees received, teacher salaries have still not increased. North Carolina has seen the sharpest decline in the country in teacher pay, according to the National Education Association. When adjusted for inflation, teacher salaries dropped by 15.7 percent from 2001 to 2011, the group says. The average teacher's salary is now $46,000, putting North Carolina 46th in the country in teacher pay. The General Assembly's 2013 education budget also hit teacher salaries. Legislators did away with supplements for teachers who earn their master's degrees after the 2013-14 school year, moving instead to a system where teacher pay will be tied to their yearly evaluations and students' test scores.The Legislature made other changes that educators aren't happy with: cutting funding for teacher's assistants, offering vouchers for private school tuition to low-income students or requiring teachers to undergo online training rather than invest in face-to-face professional development.It's hard to tell if slumping pay and legislative changes are sending teachers to other states or other professions that pay more. The state Department of Public Instruction each year puts out a teacher turnover report, which tracks the reasons teachers leave their jobs. The overall turnover rate for the 2011-12 school year, the most recent for which the state has data, was about 11.1 percent. Some of that represents teachers who moved from one district to another or who took an administrator position in their district. Since 2008, the percentage of teachers who left to teach in another state has stayed constant, between 3 and 4 percent. But the percentage of teachers who listed "dissatisfied with teaching" or "career change" as their reason for leaving has jumped slightly, going from 5 percent in 2008 to 7 percent in 2012. So far, there's little data to suggest that waves of teachers are leaving the state or the profession. But there is anecdotal evidence that illustrates a growing frustration. The StarNews spoke with three teachers from Southeastern North Carolina who left the profession or the state at the end of the 2012-13 school year. All three emphasized that the decision to leave was personal and might not be for everyone. But for them, they said, being a teacher in North Carolina was no longer working.

Sollosi got a teaching job at Laney High in 2006, right after she graduated from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She taught civics and economics and advanced-placement world history and helped pilot Laney's freshmen academy. Last year, she was named the best high school teacher in New Hanover County.That's when things started to change. Sollosi, along with other top teachers, was invited to an education reform forum hosted by the speaker of the state House of Representatives. Sollosi and her peers were asked to tell members of the state House what they thought was and wasn't working in North Carolina schools.But once she saw how those same lawmakers were voting, "it was apparent that they didn't care at all about what we said," Sollosi said. "I just couldn't do it anymore."She was on maternity leave from her teaching job at the time. So she started looking for another job and, within a month, found a position as an office manager at an insurance company. Though an entry-level employee with no insurance experience, Sollosi said she's already seen a significant salary increase and better benefits for her family of four. The decision to leave teaching was agonizing. Sollosi says she was "one of those critical kids" – a natural explainer who analyzed her teachers' style. She made the decision to go into education as a high-schooler and received a scholarship to UNCW through N.C. Teaching Fellows, a program that gave scholarships to students who promised to teach in North Carolina for at least four years after graduation. (That program was also phased out in the General Assembly's 2013 budget.)"Part of me feels like a quitter," she said. "Part of me is ashamed for not being able to stick through it like my peers who are starting another year."But she wants members of the General Assembly to understand that she decided to leave because of the decisions they made. "I know I was an amazing teacher. I loved that relationship with the kids and the families," she said. "But at the same time, I'm prideful. It is embarrassing to teach in North Carolina.""I couldn't hold my head up."

Kyle and her husband got married five years ago – a date that coincided perfectly with the freeze on teachers' salaries in North Carolina.That put some extra strain on Kyle and her new husband, who'd bought a house soon after their wedding. Both were educators: Kyle taught language arts and worked as a literacy coach at Holly Shelter Middle School, and her husband was an assistant principal in Brunswick County Schools. With those salaries, they could pay the mortgage on their new house – but not comfortably. And if they wanted to put money in their savings, or enjoy a dinner out once in a while, they needed to get second jobs, Kyle said – or leave the state.Kyle struggled with that idea. She grew up in Salisbury, attended Appalachian State University and has spent her entire nine-year teaching career in North Carolina, working in Mount Airy City Schools and in New Hanover County. Her parents and three siblings are all here."There was no part of me that wanted to leave," she said. "Yes, a better paycheck sounds great. But at the cost of leaving my entire family?"Both Kyle and her husband picked up second jobs to make ends meet. But at the start of the 2012-13 school year, her husband put his foot down: If we want to start thinking about having children, he told Kyle, we have to leave North Carolina. We can't afford to raise kids here. So the pair moved to Pennsylvania, where Kyle's husband is originally from. They both found jobs in education, with salaries that almost doubled their household income. But Kyle said her decision to leave the state was about more than money. As a teacher in North Carolina, "I felt like I was no longer valued as a professional at all," she said.It's a different environment for Pennsylvania teachers, she said. She pointed to master's degrees as an example. When she told her Pennsylvania co-workers that the state had eliminated supplements for teachers with advanced education, they were floored, she said. In her new district, teachers are encouraged, almost required, to hold a master's, and they're reimbursed for at least 90 percent of their tuition.Kyle still misses her home state. But she's slowly settling in to her new life – and the respect she gets as a teacher is helping that."It's completely different. You're definitely viewed as a professional," she said. "People in politics are fighting for you to be viewed as a professional as well."

Brown stood before the Brunswick County Board of Education last month and told the members he was leaving his job as a chemistry teacher at South Brunswick High School. He didn't make that decision because of anything that happened in Brunswick County, or even anything that happened in Southeastern North Carolina, he said. It was because of the state.Stagnant salaries are hard enough to stomach, Brown said, pointing to teachers' frozen pay and the General Assembly's decision to remove tenure. But what bothers Brown the most are things like the move to merit pay, where teachers whose student test scores fall in the top percentile will receive bonuses.Brown called the trend of professional learning communities made up of several teachers within a school "one of the biggest breakthroughs in education.""(Merit pay) is just going to drive a wedge between teachers," he said. "It's going to ruin that collaboration we've worked so hard on."For Brown, who's now working as a chemist, the decision to leave ultimately came down to kids. He thinks about his own, saying that he and his wife – an English teacher at South Brunswick High School who's keeping her teaching job – couldn't even talk about having a second child on two teachers' salaries. While they're not trying to have another child right now, he said, they at least wanted to have the option.He also thinks about the students in his old classes. They felt like his kids, too, he said, and leaving that was his first thought when he quit his job. But "the negatives were beginning to outweigh the positives," he said, and he needed to make a change. But the students know he's gone. On the first day of school, Brown got word from his old assistant principal: One of his former students had taped a poster along the windows at the front of the school to honor him. It read, "We love you and miss you, Mr. Brown."If Brown could talk to Gov. Pat McCrory and the legislators about the changes they've made, that's what he'd tell them."It's not going to be you that suffers," he said. "It's going to be these kids."